


Straight Homicides

by Regency



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, F/F, Gen, Pedophilia, old fic, references to
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 10:32:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4622016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regency/pseuds/Regency
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Casey wanted “straight homicides. All of the glory; no living victims.”  She found that sometimes there’s no glory and some victims live. There’s also no such thing as a straight homicide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluemermaiid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemermaiid/gifts).



                Kiddie sex rings weren’t her scene.  She’d picked Homicide, because it required less human interaction and put less of a burden on her compassionate nature.  With a murderer, she didn’t have to wonder how events had conspired to put the weapon in hand or about how the victim would go on with the damage done to them. With a murderer, the distaste was real but vague; with a sex offender, she wanted to pull the lever herself. So, really, the last place she should have been called to was the pretty Victorian on Layali Avenue.

                She counted nine school-aged children dressed in increasingly erotic turns at Halloween costumes.  Gulping back the lunch she’d actually gotten to eat for a change, she offered them a small smile and headed inside.  She didn’t even belong at the scene but Branch had insisted and here she was.

                A young woman in uniform nodded to her and opened the door.  Casey could almost read the pity in her eyes it was written out so boldly.  She took a deep breath and mistakenly inhaled a chalky cloud of French perfume. Experience told her it wasn’t cheap; but, that didn’t make it sweet-smelling either and she coughed at the chemical sting in her sinuses.

                “Thank you for contaminating our crime scene. Can I help you with something?”

                Casey restrained herself from inhaling another large plume of the sugary atmosphere.  She knew it was too late as she felt throbbing start behind her eyes. “Casey Novak, ADA for Homicide. I was instructed to meet you here.”

                The man before her looked on with a fair bit of skepticism.  “Detective Elliot Stabler, Special Victims. Our ADA’s out of commission for the time being. Seeing as this case crosses both our purviews, Branch thought it made sense to make you replacement legal eagle for the duration.”

                Casey thought that was something she could have been told this morning—someplace where it would have been appropriate to yell as loudly as she would have liked to just now.  Instead, “Oh” would have to do.

                “Oh,” he mouthed, shaking his head and turning away.  The ADA rolled her eyes towards the ceiling and regretted it immediately.

                “Oh, God,” she whispered.  Blood pools had never come in shapes in her experience; at least, not in the shape of a small child. They had also never been on the ceiling.  “Detective,” she called so hoarsely she could hardly hear herself. “Detective Stabler.”

                He turned to her suddenly, giving every indication that he was ready to dress her down—till he looked in the direction she was pointing.

                Casey couldn’t look away. “Exactly how much blood did the vic lose?”

                Elliot couldn’t look away either.  “There’s no vic on the second floor.”


	2. Chapter 2

                Casey hadn’t planned to go upstairs.  Detective Stabler, along with his partner Detective Benson, had sprung up from the ground floor with their guns at the ready.  The scene was supposed to have been cleared; another body told them that somebody hadn’t done their job right.

                She had stood to the right of the banister, listening as doors were kicked open and the officers identified themselves again.  Then, there’d been the silence. Next, whispering.  A uniform hurried down past her to the entryway.  He stared up at the blood stain from the spot where she’d stood.

                “It’s right here, Detective. I’m looking right at it,” he reported into his radio.

                Casey decided right then to take the initiative.  “We have another victim?” He looked at her with the wariness all uniforms afforded to attorneys.  They hadn’t gotten high enough on the food chain to realize that ADAs might save their careers one day. “Well?”

                He cleared his throat and nodded. “We think so. The blood’s here but there’s no body up there. Not that we can find anyway.”

                She hazarded a glance up at the area that had begun to bulge under the weight of the fluid. “Is it a wood floor? Maybe it’s under the floorboards.”  The young patrolman seemed to light up and slapped a button to report to the folks upstairs when they were alerted to sounds of heavy furniture been shoved around.  “Never mind,” said Casey, mostly to herself.

                “Somebody call Warner and tell her to get back here, double-time,” yelled the woman named Benson as she thundered down the stairs.  “We need a crowbar. Does anybody have one?”

                _If there was ever a time to start overachieving..._   Casey raised her hand uncomfortably.  “In my trunk.”  She received another look of skepticism from the dark-haired woman.

                “We’re gonna need it,” the detective gestured towards the door. Casey took the head position to lead her out the front door.  The scene was buzzing and the vultures, otherwise known as the media, were circling.  She was grateful to see that the children from earlier had been rounded up and taken from the scene. They didn’t need this nightmare to be their network debut.

                Casey and Benson ducked under the crime tape and went to her car, pointedly ignoring the shouting reporters attempting to bait them with provocative assholery.  She popped the trunk with her keychain remote and began to rummage around for the crowbar she had wedged under a file carrier.

                “Do you always carry a crowbar in your trunk?” asked the previously silent detective at her side.

                Casey spared a glance at the other woman to see her glancing interestedly over her shoulder.  Her trunk wasn’t a complete shambles, but the car was lived-in. She shrugged, absently. There were a couple of garment bags with spare clothes, a nice pair of heels she hadn’t worn to the opera, a stroller she didn’t want to explain, and a file carrier with a broken lid that was holding her much-vaunted crowbar hostage. She grunted and pulled.  Her colleague didn’t seem inclined to intervene.

                “I know we didn’t get off on the best foot, but a little help would not be unappreciated right now,” she tossed out in the hopes of prodding the officer into action.

                “Right, sorry,” Benson said and reached over her hands to grab hold of the carrier.  The fit was a bit tighter than expected.  She frowned and tugged as Casey tugged.  “Is it glued in?”

                “Not intentionally.”

                Benson blinked at her disbelieving. “That’s a story I want to hear someday.” She, then, resumed her grunt work.

                “Buy me a drink and you can hear it tomorrow,” Casey offered half-heartedly before she heaved one last time and freed it—that sharp piece of metal that was far heavier than she’d remembered.  Only by the grace of a woman she really didn’t know that well did she manage not to take out a vital facial feature.

                The detective had halted the bar mid-way between the trunk and her right eye with her hands. Sending up quiet thanks for the woman’s quick reflexes, Casey released a weak breath.  Benson let out a heavy one.

                “That could have ended badly,” she commented, gently prying Casey’s fingers from the slightly rusted handle.

                “Yeah,” the ADA agreed, reminiscing internally on how this never happened with Homicide.  She sighed and felt more than slightly embarrassed. Somehow, she knew this was going to show up on the internet and she was never going to hear the end of it at the precinct.

                “At least, you can say you earned that drink,” continued Benson.  Casey returned her attention to the dark-haired detective who seemed to be slowly making her way back to the front porch.  “We’re gonna get these bastards—whatever they’ve done—and you’re gonna help us do it.”

                Casey was back to square one. “Oh,” she breathed.

                “Oh,” Benson mimicking in amusement with a raised eyebrow.  Smirking, she turned away. “Thanks for the crowbar,” she shouted behind her, taking the front steps in a quick bound.

                “You’re welcome,” Casey said to herself.  She’d almost forgotten what they were doing here.  This was the scene of a worse crime than they’d expected.  She didn’t know how many long nights would be required of her or how many meals she’d lose before they closed the book on this case. Whatever the cost, she was in this one for the long haul--

                Her cell phone in her coat pocket began to ring and she knew it was Branch.

                --whether she liked it or not.


	3. Chapter 3

                “I don’t believe you,” Casey said instead of choked, with more composure than she felt.

                “Believe it,” Benson confirmed and slapped the folder down on the desk. She sat back, legs up and hands folded behind her head.  She didn’t even look fazed.

                “No one lives after losing that much blood.” Casey began to pace. Pacing got her blood pumping and moderated her rage just a bit. “Especially not enough blood to soak through insulation and whatever that ceiling was made of. It’s not scientifically sound.”

                “That’s what I said.” Casey twisted to see the M.E. enter the squad room in her usual unassuming way.  She had a depressing brown folder in hand.

                “And,” Casey prompted. She didn’t have a lot of patience left for lengthy explanations. This case made her grimace with discomfort. She wasn’t sure if it was the children or the death. The latter was something she’d thought she was used to.

                “The best explanation I can give you is that it didn’t all come from the victim.”

                Detective Benson finally looked fazed.  She stood and moved to stand at Casey’s side. “Then, where did it come from?”

                Warner exhaled a shallow breath and shook her head. “From the sheer number of different DNA profiles that were gathered at the scene, I’d say something akin to a blood bank.  However, the amounts discovered in some instances far surpass what would be taken under standard conditions.”

                “By how much,” Benson asked, hands stuffs into the back pockets of her jeans.

                “To the point that the blood loss suffered by the ‘donor’ would have become incompatible with life,” Warner concluded, closing the dossier without a hint of a relief. “At the risk of making a premature judgment, I have to tell you that I think you’re searching for at least three additional bodies. These people aren’t alive anymore.” Having known her since her first days in Homicide, Casey sympathized with the medical examiner’s resignation.  Things were never good in their business, but God could they have been better.

                “And the rest,” Casey asked, trying to keep a firm hold on her horses. She needed to know everything, she told herself, and that would help her make this right.  The idealist in her wanted to believe that there was some way she could.

                “Alive. Examination of the scene didn’t reveal any greater contributions from the six other individual donors than one would find in a single IV unit of blood.  The biggest bleeder was the victim.”

                Casey took a couple of steps back, needing some distance. “I didn’t lay eyes on the victim; I don’t even know what we’re dealing with here. Is it a child or...Detective?” She sent Benson a silent plea. She’d worked so hard to distance herself from the surviving victims that she didn’t actually know who any of them were.  This wasn’t how she generally did things.

                “Child, age eight.  Female. The owner of the home vanished before we executed the warrant and none of the other inhabitants gave us a name. It’s just a girl, Counselor. Not a monster,” Benson said in way Casey could have done without today.

                “I’m well aware of that, Detective Benson. The only monster here is the one I intend to put away for the rest of that little girl’s life and the rest of his,” she retorted hotly. Casey willed herself to calm down lest her runaway temper get her into more trouble than she could afford. “Look, this is not my case or my unit.  I work straight homicides and that’s what I’m good at.  I don’t _do_ living victims.”

                “Because there’s no glory in it,” Benson remarked with barely hidden derision.

                “Because there’s no living with it,” Casey objected.  She was at a loss to deal with this version of Olivia Benson.  This was not the woman she’d met today nor was this the woman she’d sat with companionably in the squad room with for an hour before the M.E. had arrived. “I don’t know what you want from me, Detective.  Regardless of whether you agree with my rationale, I’m going to do my job. That includes doing everything possible to protect the children harmed by our perp.” She turned sharply to the medical examiner, who seemed happy enough to stay uninvolved. “Doctor Warner?”

                “Yes.”

                “Do you know anything about the injuries the living vic sustained?”

                “Can’t say that I do. I generally keep to the business of non-living.”

                “Right. What about our initial DB? Any obvious cause of death,” she asked, returning to the reason she’d initially been brought onboard.

                “Thought you’d never ask.  Best I can estimate is that the initial victim died from of exsanguination—massive blood loss.”

                Benson narrowed her eyes, thinking.  “Massive ‘inconsistent with life’ blood loss?”

                Warner nodded. “Exactly the same.”

                “So, whoever did this is killing people by draining them of blood. What motive could he possibly have?” Casey asked, once again wishing she was back in Homicide where it was business as usual to interpret the delusional actions of delusional people.

                “Maybe the victim can tell us,” Detective Benson said, rising to her feet.  “Counselor, I think it’s time you understood why we do this job.” She turned to Warner, who was observing the two of them with textbook aloofness. “Thanks, Doc.”

                Warner waved her off. “Just doing my job.”

                Benson gestured before her. “Counselor.”

Casey guessed she was supposed to lead the way.  “Detective.”  She smiled back to Warner once more before exiting the squad room with the surly detective in tow.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own either the recognizable characters from Criminal Minds or any characters recognizable as being from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. They are the property of their respective producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.
> 
> If you guys wanna talk/flail/flop with me on Tumblr, I'm [sententiousandbellicose](http://sententiousandbellicose.tumblr.com).


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